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Mike Strange: Not a fun season for UT tennis teams

Published 5:39 a.m. ET April 27, 2016

University of Tennessee men's head tennis coach Sam Winterbotham is pictured at the University of Tennessee's Barksdale Stadium on Tuesday, April 19, 2011.(Photo: Saul Young)

Tuesday brought more fun for Sam Winterbotham. He had a flat tire on I-40 with no spare in the trunk.

Pretty much par for the course with the campaign his Tennessee tennis team just finished.

The 2016 season produced the worst combined results from UT men's and women's teams since ... maybe ever.

Tennessee's men, only three years removed from the Elite Eight at the NCAA tournament, went 0-12 in the SEC regular season. Winterbotham's Vols finally claimed a 4-3 win over Auburn in the SEC tournament last week before losing to Kentucky by the same score.

Tennessee's women finished 1-12 in the SEC then lost in the opening round of the conference tournament. The team coached by Mike and Sonia Patrick, beat Alabama on March 13.

'It's a learning experience,'' said Mike Patrick, 'that was not a lot of fun for them and not a lot of fun for us.''

The one SEC win is the women's fewest since 1986.

Both programs have recent histories of success. In the 2010 and 2011 seasons, the men went a combined 21-1 in SEC play and played in the 2010 NCAA title match. Those same seasons, the women were 17-5 in SEC play.

The women missed the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year. The men are sitting out for the first time since 2006. This spring, they shared a common setback — injuries.

A key injury can hurt a football team. It can devastate a tennis team. There is no second- or third-stringer to fill the gap. A men's team has 4.5 scholarships.

The women's team lost three players from the singles lineup for varying periods of time due to surgery, a stress fracture and a broken wrist.

When a player drops out of the singles lineup, everybody else usually moves up one slot. In an unforgiving league like the SEC, that's not a formula for success. Four SEC women's teams are in the top 10, seven in the top 20.

'There's a blade of grass between being a top-10 team and 7-5,'' Patrick said.

On the men's side, Igor Smelyanski projected to play No. 1 singles. Then he broke his leg and missed all but a couple of SEC matches.

'You're not only losing somebody capable of winning at No. 1,'' Winterbotham said, 'everyone has to slide up a spot.''

Winterbotham thought this would be a good season, even having lost his top three singles players from last year. But another loss last year proved harder to shake.

Sean Karl, a sophomore, died of cancer in November of 2014. His teammates and coaches essentially spent the 2015 season in mourning. The freshmen on that team never absorbed the confidence that would have helped them set the tone on a young 2016 squad.

'They aren't able to provide the leadership they would have had if we'd had a normal year,'' Winterbotham said. 'They're trying to figure it out themselves now.''

That said, Winterbotham is uncomfortable making excuses. The 0-12 record speaks for itself, he said.

'We had matches we could have won,'' he said. 'I'll take full responsibility.''

The tennis community pales in scale compared to revenue sports. Can you imagine the feedback Butch Jones would get going winless in the SEC? Winterbotham said he still gets pats on the back, not daggers.

'Knowing how coaches think,'' he said, 'if Butch Jones goes 0-and-10 there is nobody more devastated than Butch Jones. There is nobody more devastated than me at going 0-and-12 and having the season we just had.''

At least it's over. Both Winterbotham and Patrick are confident better days await in 2017.

'I don't want to ever be in this position again,'' Winterbotham said. 'I don't think we will.''